In the '50s and '60s, my mum was a Guardian journalist.
That sentence has been spun for maximum impact, although it's essentially true (we'll come back to that in a bit). In fact, she was an old-school reporter - assizes, inquests and children’s page - on the Middleton Guardian, and an occasional stringer for the then-Manchester Guardian down the road. She told me that, as far as she knew, the only other woman reporter ever seen in a coroner's court outside London at the time was one from the Sheffield Telegraph. That was Jean Rook.
My mother's career path followed the only possible route for non-university-educated women back then: start in the typing pool and hope for the best. She eventually got to take letters for (rather than to) the editor, who, having noticed that she had a knack for turning a phrase after she'd knocked his rambling dictation – he enjoyed a drink – into some kind of usable shape, started sending her off to cover the occasional inquest. (He was very much a deep-end kinda guy. "Anything juicy?" he’d ask when she came back in. "Pfft," she’d reply. "Misadventure again. Sorry.")
One fateful day (as she would certainly never have put it), the editor assigned her to cover a Conservative party meeting before some local elections, an event that all the full-fledged reporters had managed to find an excuse to avoid. A local organiser, Mrs (Name Lost in the Mists of Family History), spoke at soporific length about how to get the most out of the chore of canvassing. "At some houses you needn't waste your time," she told the eager faithful after an hour or so of precise leaflet-folding instructions. "You can tell they vote Labour before you even knock on the door. Just look down. If you see a dirty doorstep, you can forget it. Try next door instead."[1]
My mother couldn’t believe what she'd heard. Well, she could, because she'd been taking the whole speech down verbatim in her erm-and-ah-perfect shorthand.
Front-page splash in the paper the next day: LABOUR VOTERS HAVE "DIRTY DOORSTEPS", TOP LOCAL TORY CLAIMS.
Mrs NLMFH rang the editor shrieking that she’d said no such thing. The local party chairman rang the editor, calling for the head of the "recklessly irresponsible young lady" who’d had the temerity to invent such a terrible slur.
The editor stood by his reporter, much as Simon Kelner stood by Johann Hari, except in this case not only was she able to show him her shorthand notes, she’d also had enough nous to take the contact details of a couple of other people who’d heard what Mrs NLMFH had said and would be willing to confirm it.
The local Tories lost the election, my mother was promoted to the newsroom proper and the paper got a healthy blip in its circulation.
The lesson my mother learned that day was one she passed on to me: "Say what you like, and be as shrill and sensationalist as you like, but always, always make sure you’ve got the facts right or it’s back to the typing pool for you, and you won’t get another chance."
It was advice I followed when I worked as an advertising copywriter. Yes, I polished every selling point so hard it gleamed – not unlike a Tory doorstep, in fact – but anyone checking up would find that although it had been spun with Hotpoint-like vigour it would always hold up under scrutiny.
It occurred to me over the last couple of days that Johann Hari has fallen foul not only of my mum’s standards as an old-school journalist but also of mine as an old-school copywriter. Because, let’s not kid ourselves, he’s essentially just as much a copywriter, propagandist or PR for Noble Causes as he is a journalist. (In a 2004 interview he said that his view of a columnist's role was "a sort of paid political campaigner for the causes you believe in," which explains quite a lot, really.)
So, if you met your interviewee on the terrace of a hotel beach bar, don’t say it was a Starbucks. If a psychologist is a flaky fringe figure, don’t call him a distinguished social scientist. And if Hugo Chávez said something to someone from Newsweek, don’t claim he leaned forward, patted your knee, shifted in his chair, took a sip of his coffee, looked out of the window and said it to you several years later. Because if you do, when you’re called on it – and some day you certainly will be called on it - you won’t be able to pull that little ring-bound notebook out of your handbag and point to where it says, in perfect shorthand, "dirty doorstep".
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1. Or, as Johann Hari might have put it but for reasons best known to himself never did, words to that effect. The notebook and my mum's cuttings scrapbook haven't survived and the Middleton Guardian's online archive doesn't go back that far. Don't think I haven't checked.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Seven Pillars of Bullshit
The aspect of Harigate II - the allegations of sock-puppetry and serial Wikipedia mischief by Johann Hari rather than his now-proven serial plagiarism - that has been most harshly criticised by his apologists is the "cheap", "unfair" and "vindictive" use that has been made of the porn connection. (To cut an improbably long story short, the online trail left by Johann Hari’s mystery Wikipedia champion leads to one other place only: a hardcore story about pimping out a 15-year-old boy that was posted on a gay website.)
I don’t know why bringing this matter up is supposed to be unfair. After all, Hari himself has written at length and in non-condemnatory terms about not only pornography but also incest and gay sex with teens.
In his introduction to a 2006 piece on his website about "bareback" gay porn, Hari downplays (I’m trying hard to be even-handed here and not say "condones") the sexual abuse of male teenagers in these terms:
I’m not going to discuss that argument's worth or even its potential for eyebrow-raising, because I’d rather focus on the one part of it that is, at least at first sight, not contentious: the seven words "the distinguished social scientist Bruce Ring published", because five of them are demonstrably bollocks.
Bruce L. Rind (not, perhaps fortunately for him, "Ring") is a psychologist (not a social scientist) who co-authored a certain paper (not, as suggested, wrote and published it alone) in 1998.
So what about the "distinguished" bit, then?
At the age of 59, Rind is still a non-tenured "adjunct instructor", which is roughly equivalent to an assistant lecturer, hired to teach a specific course for a specific period of time. He teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia, which is ranked 132nd in the U.S. News rankings of American universities (although, to be fair, its Psychology graduate programme streaks home in 50th place). And he’s not exactly a wow with his students either. They’ve graded his classes with an average score of 2.5 (“poor”).
The 1998 Rind et. al. paper wasn’t just dismissed by at least four peer reviewers as "scientifically invalid" and roundly disowned by the American Psychological Association; it's the only paper in the history of U.S. scientific literature to have been condemned by Congress. No, not railed against by some school board in Knuckledrag, Kansas – actually condemned by the House of Representatives. To call its main conclusion, that the sexual abuse of adolescent boys is not necessarily harmful, off the mark would be to do it a big favour. What Johann Hari neglects to tell us is that males who were sexually abused as adolescents have been found by subsequent – and presumably equally distinguished – researchers to be three times more likely to turn to therapy for emotional problems and five times more likely to commit suicide than their non-abused peers.
Both Rind and his long-term colleague Robert Bauserman (one of the co-authors on that 1998 paper) have published extensively on what is sometimes whitewashed as "man-boy love", although some researchers refer to it as "intergenerational intimacy", while Rind and Bauserman go one better and oh-so-scientifically call it "age-discrepant sexual relations (ADSR)" instead. One of the journals that they chose to publish their findings in was the now-defunct Netherlands-based Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. Here's an extract from that publication’s statement of purpose, to give an idea of where these people were, er, coming from:
The same year that they published the paper that Hari so confidently cites, Rind and Bauserman participated as keynote speakers, alongside two members of the editorial board of Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia, at a pro-paedophilia conference held in Amsterdam. Rind’s address was later published in the International Pedophile and Child Emancipation Newsletter, which must have been nice for him.
But let’s get back to more familiar and probably more comfortable ground for Johann Hari: Wikipedia. It turns out that such a distinguished titan of the social sciences as Dr Bruce L. Rind has a Wikipedia entry of his own that is...oops, he hasn't got one. (I mean, come on, even my distinguished mate the self-published short-story writer has got his own Wikipedia entry). Rind does, however, feature heavily in the entry titled "Rind et al. controversy" about the huge stink that was raised by the very paper that Johann Hari saw fit to cite to bolster his curious beliefs.
So that’s the "distinguished" bit dealt with. (Maybe we should be charitable and assume that Hari’s autocorrect must have been playing tricks the day he tried to write "discredited".)
And there we have it. Of the seven words "the distinguished social scientist Bruce Ring published", only two actually hold up to any scrutiny at all: "the" and "Bruce".
What conclusions might we reasonably draw about the accuracy and fair representation to be found throughout Johann Hari’s journalism based on this analysis of one teeny-weeny fragment of it? I’m not sure, but I’m confident Andreas Whittam-Smith will let us know before too long.
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POSTSCRIPT (14 July 2011)
I was under the impression that Hari's bareback-porn piece, which I quote from, had not appeared in The Independent, as I could find no trace of it anywhere other than on Hari's website. (The length of the piece and the amount of "worked-up" detail suggest it was written for publication rather than as a blog entry, so it might be reasonable to assume that it was spiked.) However, I have now learned that the part of the text that I specifically deal with here (from "the distinguished..." to "'...less negatively than women'", i.e. the Rind et al. citation and quoted material) had already been used by Hari with the exact same wording - yes, the misspelled surname and all - in a completely different article, published by The Independent nearly three months before the bareback-porn post appeared on his blog.
Still with me? This may seem like only a minor detail but it's actually crucial. I used those seven words as an example of the sort of thing that Andreas Whittam Smith might consider looking for when he reviews Hari's writings for the newspaper. I now realise that since the seven words did appear in the newspaper, albeit in a completely different context, they fall slap-bang in the middle of the remit of Whittam Smith's investigation.
Perhaps someone reading this might wish to draw his attention to those seven words, because, besides further demonstrating Hari's penchant for distortion and dissembling, they don't say a fat lot in favour of the paper's editorial filtering processes, do they?
I get the feeling it's going to be a long, hot summer for one genuinely distinguished old gentleman of the press.
(Thanks to Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph for pointing this out.)
I don’t know why bringing this matter up is supposed to be unfair. After all, Hari himself has written at length and in non-condemnatory terms about not only pornography but also incest and gay sex with teens.
In his introduction to a 2006 piece on his website about "bareback" gay porn, Hari downplays (I’m trying hard to be even-handed here and not say "condones") the sexual abuse of male teenagers in these terms:
[G]ay men are right to suspect that while making porn can fuck up the women who are spat out (or swallowed) in its production, it is less likely to have a psychologically dangerous effect on the men who take part. In 1998 the distinguished social scientist Bruce Ring published a thorough study into the difference between the way girls and boys react to sexually abusive or exposing situations. He found that teenage boys who had been abused "reacted much less negatively than women." While girls were usually dreadfully disturbed, most boys suffered "negative effects that were neither pervasive nor typically intense." So the girl your straight mates watch being gang-banged on camera for cash will probably be deeply disturbed by it for years; the boy you watch probably won’t be psychologically damaged for long.
I’m not going to discuss that argument's worth or even its potential for eyebrow-raising, because I’d rather focus on the one part of it that is, at least at first sight, not contentious: the seven words "the distinguished social scientist Bruce Ring published", because five of them are demonstrably bollocks.
Bruce L. Rind (not, perhaps fortunately for him, "Ring") is a psychologist (not a social scientist) who co-authored a certain paper (not, as suggested, wrote and published it alone) in 1998.
So what about the "distinguished" bit, then?
At the age of 59, Rind is still a non-tenured "adjunct instructor", which is roughly equivalent to an assistant lecturer, hired to teach a specific course for a specific period of time. He teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia, which is ranked 132nd in the U.S. News rankings of American universities (although, to be fair, its Psychology graduate programme streaks home in 50th place). And he’s not exactly a wow with his students either. They’ve graded his classes with an average score of 2.5 (“poor”).
The 1998 Rind et. al. paper wasn’t just dismissed by at least four peer reviewers as "scientifically invalid" and roundly disowned by the American Psychological Association; it's the only paper in the history of U.S. scientific literature to have been condemned by Congress. No, not railed against by some school board in Knuckledrag, Kansas – actually condemned by the House of Representatives. To call its main conclusion, that the sexual abuse of adolescent boys is not necessarily harmful, off the mark would be to do it a big favour. What Johann Hari neglects to tell us is that males who were sexually abused as adolescents have been found by subsequent – and presumably equally distinguished – researchers to be three times more likely to turn to therapy for emotional problems and five times more likely to commit suicide than their non-abused peers.
Both Rind and his long-term colleague Robert Bauserman (one of the co-authors on that 1998 paper) have published extensively on what is sometimes whitewashed as "man-boy love", although some researchers refer to it as "intergenerational intimacy", while Rind and Bauserman go one better and oh-so-scientifically call it "age-discrepant sexual relations (ADSR)" instead. One of the journals that they chose to publish their findings in was the now-defunct Netherlands-based Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia. Here's an extract from that publication’s statement of purpose, to give an idea of where these people were, er, coming from:
[T]o speak today of paedophilia, which we understand to be consensual intergenerational sexual relationships, is to speak of the politics of oppression. This is the milieu in which we are enmeshed, the fabric of our daily life and struggle. [...] It is our contention that the oppression of paedophilia is part of the larger repression of sexuality, and that this repression in general represents an irrational expression of authority in government. The oppression of paedophilia is therefore dangerous in a wider sense than simply to paedophiles.
The same year that they published the paper that Hari so confidently cites, Rind and Bauserman participated as keynote speakers, alongside two members of the editorial board of Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia, at a pro-paedophilia conference held in Amsterdam. Rind’s address was later published in the International Pedophile and Child Emancipation Newsletter, which must have been nice for him.
But let’s get back to more familiar and probably more comfortable ground for Johann Hari: Wikipedia. It turns out that such a distinguished titan of the social sciences as Dr Bruce L. Rind has a Wikipedia entry of his own that is...oops, he hasn't got one. (I mean, come on, even my distinguished mate the self-published short-story writer has got his own Wikipedia entry). Rind does, however, feature heavily in the entry titled "Rind et al. controversy" about the huge stink that was raised by the very paper that Johann Hari saw fit to cite to bolster his curious beliefs.
So that’s the "distinguished" bit dealt with. (Maybe we should be charitable and assume that Hari’s autocorrect must have been playing tricks the day he tried to write "discredited".)
And there we have it. Of the seven words "the distinguished social scientist Bruce Ring published", only two actually hold up to any scrutiny at all: "the" and "Bruce".
What conclusions might we reasonably draw about the accuracy and fair representation to be found throughout Johann Hari’s journalism based on this analysis of one teeny-weeny fragment of it? I’m not sure, but I’m confident Andreas Whittam-Smith will let us know before too long.
_______
POSTSCRIPT (14 July 2011)
I was under the impression that Hari's bareback-porn piece, which I quote from, had not appeared in The Independent, as I could find no trace of it anywhere other than on Hari's website. (The length of the piece and the amount of "worked-up" detail suggest it was written for publication rather than as a blog entry, so it might be reasonable to assume that it was spiked.) However, I have now learned that the part of the text that I specifically deal with here (from "the distinguished..." to "'...less negatively than women'", i.e. the Rind et al. citation and quoted material) had already been used by Hari with the exact same wording - yes, the misspelled surname and all - in a completely different article, published by The Independent nearly three months before the bareback-porn post appeared on his blog.
Still with me? This may seem like only a minor detail but it's actually crucial. I used those seven words as an example of the sort of thing that Andreas Whittam Smith might consider looking for when he reviews Hari's writings for the newspaper. I now realise that since the seven words did appear in the newspaper, albeit in a completely different context, they fall slap-bang in the middle of the remit of Whittam Smith's investigation.
Perhaps someone reading this might wish to draw his attention to those seven words, because, besides further demonstrating Hari's penchant for distortion and dissembling, they don't say a fat lot in favour of the paper's editorial filtering processes, do they?
I get the feeling it's going to be a long, hot summer for one genuinely distinguished old gentleman of the press.
(Thanks to Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph for pointing this out.)
Monday, 18 April 2011
What's Real Madrid all about, Alfie?
The football Barcelona played at the Bernabéu was just brilliant. Their superiority was patent and on view for all the world to see. They've got something that Real Madrid don't have. The whites were hemmed in by opposition that dominated the midfield throughout the whole match. Barcelona played football and danced; Real Madrid just ran up and down, tiring themselves out.
Only if Xavi, Iniesta or Busquets lost the ball did Real Madrid ever try to put together an attack, but of course it was with a punt upfield in the hope that something might come of it. And whenever those three wanted, they could put the sheep to sleep passing the ball to one another with complete mastery, short and straight to the feet — perfectly executed, tight passes that were safe and sure for whoever was on the receiving end.
It was as if they wanted to take the ball home with them, because it was all theirs. Their mission was to feed the Barcelona strikers — and how well fed they were! — because they are so crushingly effective and the ease with which they create danger is permanent.
"Besides maintaining a very quick pace without once letting it up, the Barcelona players fought like true gladiators. They worked very hard indeed off the ball and never stopped moving.
"There was no negotiation, no refusal to paint their work of art on that green canvas, whatever the final scoreline might say, because they even played pretty football, always well placed. Their positioning in the team is a key factor. All their players show that a level of tactical thinking that is unmatched, with a highly developed sense of interchanging their roles.
The defensive effort was all Real Madrid’s, like the lion against the mouse. They were unable to neutralise their opponents with effective pressing in midfield, which is what they needed to do, although stopping Barça from making you so dizzy you end up reeling is much easier said than done. For the spectator, their well-put-together attacks in combination were a wonderful thing to see.
For as long as Di Maria had the strength to break through on the few occasions he had the ball, he was Madrid’s best player (along with “Saint Iker” Casillas, who deserves to be canonised right now).
Messi is the best in the world. Not only is his football spectacular, as an example of professionalism he also knows no rival. He shone on Saturday and it will be wonderful to watch him again in Wednesday’s Cup Final.
Barcelona’s success comes from their attacking approach, wisely applied to mature and become consolidated in time for the three more Clásicos that are upcoming. Attacking means you have to control time as well as your nerves.
Given all this, it’s obvious that Barcelona are better than Real Madrid, and that trying to build up attacking moves based on counter-attacks is not the most appropriate way to try to catch them by surprise. Their technical and tactical quality is such that they always occupy the pitch in a rational, well-balanced way, leaving no free spaces to be filled and taken advantage of.
Pep Guardiola's team always had their hands firmly on the reins of the match. With this result they’re now another step closer to their third consecutive Liga title, and the truth is that they deserve it, because they've done their homework properly. They’ve never stopped being themselves and it’s plain for anyone to see that they enjoy themselves and have fun when they play.
Another thing that needs saying is that Real Madrid aren’t making their fans feel as happy as they deserve to be, because the fans’ support for the team has been unconditional. Real Madrid showed more heart than order, and in the end their ambitions were frustrated.
Things I liked
I like and admire the huge dominance of Barcelona’s play. It’s football to be watched not with your eyes but with your soul. They treat the ball with respect, with adoration, almost pampering it. Watching this team in action is a delight for us all.
Things I didn’t like
Real Madrid was a team with no personality. This match should set the guidelines for how the next one needs to be faced, because the approach of trying to play against Barcelona with counterattacks is clearly not the way to go.
- Alfredo Di Stefano (Marca, 18 April 2010)
Monday, 14 February 2011
Karajan up the Khyber
Has the craze for minute's silences before football matches reached your parts yet? If not, you don't know what you're missing. Now no self-respecting Liga match can be without one to mark the passing of Alderman Mumble (sorry, the PA system isn't all it might be), now as sadly forgotten as he was then improbably corrupt. Yes, you know, him.
The key features of the new default modality for the minute's silence are that (a) it doesn't last for a minute and (b) it's not silent either. Presumably to save us from our baser instincts - particularly our unfortunate inclination to shout "Just bloody get on with it!" - the minute's (sic) silence (sic) actually consists of a twenty-second random snippet from some petrol-station-sourced K-Tel-equivalent of Herb Karajan's Adagio compilation, while the players all gather round the centre circle and link arms like the Tiller Girls with snoods.
So, football clubs, here's my proposal. If you saw fit to put on a testimonial match for the commemorated one way back when, fine, give them a minute's silence now. Under any other circumstances, isn't that what that half column-inch on page 14 of the programme is for?
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* On the rare occasion when the deceased actually did have a connection to the club, it's likely to be the son-in-law of Betty the Boiling Bovril Lady or the bloke who used to hang up the alphabet-coded half-time scores before the advent of video screens proved that truly none of us are indispensable.
_____________________
Saturday, 10 July 2010
The Moatygate Tapes
Gazza, tell us about the Raoul Moat you know.
Raoul Moat, a knew um yairz agur. He yowsed to be a boansa in Newcastle. A knew um a lot of yairz since when a was a young kid when a played for Newcastle. He was lake a jettilman. Someone's musta woand him up or done something, rate? All of a sudden a've just listened to the radio, rate? A mean on TV nyowz. Obvisslee he's killed someone, and he's shot two, rate? Which is not naice, really. Obvisslee he musta been on droogz. And he shot two peepil, rate? Now a've heard on the nyowz that obvisslee the droogz a musta worn off. Now he's willing to give in, rate? The Pleece are gonna hold um, rate? He’s a lovelee blurk, a nur that. So, the end the deer, a think he's frightened... erm, he's put his gun doan. A nur for a fact, he's put his gun doan, because a think he’s scared in case the Pleece shoot um and kill um. The droogz have worn off. All he wants to do is surrenda. The end the deer, you shoot someone and kill two othaz, ye might get, what, twelve yairz? Could be about six yairz that he's oat. A nur that he's a good lad.
If he could hear a message from you, Gazza, what would you say to him tonight?
Well, a think that the Pleece got a hurled of um. Listen, a've drurv from Newcastle in a taxi to Rothbury. It’s cost a lot of money. A've brought a dressun goan for um, a big jacket, a've brought some chicken, some bread... a nur you’re gonna laugh at this one: a've brought um a can of lawga... a've brought um a fission rod, cause I heard he was at the rivva, and I’ve got a fission rod too, and fission I’ll have a chat with um, and talk to um, cause a think am the urnly man, I think, I can help um through this. A’ve talked to the Pleece. A sez, “Listen,” a sez, “A nur the guy, he’s a nice guy.” A sez a wanna go through where they had everything cordoned off. I wanna get through there but the Pleece wouldn’t let us. So that was a wairsta tame. Cause they would be frightened in case he’d, lake, shoot me, y’gnaw. But I told um, “He will not shoot me.”
It’s a dangerous situation, though, Gazza, isn’t it?
Lissen. A’ve just been in a car crash, hit a wall at nanety male an owwa. A’ve survaived that. Gnawun may luck he’d probly miss.
So what you’re saying is, you want to go in there, you want to help negotiate?
A’ve got a jacket, a’ve got a dressun goan, a’ve got some chicken, a’ve got some bread, a’ve got a can of lawga, a’ve got a fission rod, a've got my fission rod, and am willun to sit down and dish out, "Moaty! It's Gazza! Whay-aye!” And a guarantee if I shout his name out — “Am heeya!” — we can sit and chat, and me and him can sit and chat, a little bit of fission, and all a’d tell um, ad say, “Moaty, listen....”
So you could sort it out and have a man-to-man chat with him — two pals on the riverbank?
Yeah, two friends on the riverbank from Newcastle… look, listen, A’d be just, ya nur, “Put the gun aware, thruh it in the rivva,” sayun, “Look, Mawty, the worst of the worst, ya might get a twelve-yair stretch. The Pleece are not gonna kill ya.” Cause a nur he’s willun to give in now, cause I think whatever he was on, it’s worn off. A’d say, “The Pleece are not gonna kill ya.” He might do a twelve-yair stretch, obvisslee, for killun someone, which is not very naice, but he did it because obvisslee he was high on drugs probly, rate? For good behaviour he’d get oat after six yairz.
Paul, have you been in touch with him recently?
Naw, because a’ve been in hospital.
When did you last talk to him?
Well, a seen um a suppose a year and a half ago when a was in Newcastle.
When you spoke to him then, how was he?
How was he? Sounza bell. Nowt wrang with um. He’s a boansa, he’s a good lad, he’s a hard guy, he’s a jettilman, but it’s not naice when his girlfriend ran off with anotha guy.
Gazza, thank you very much for talking to us on Real Radio tonight.
Thank you very much, and do us a favour?
Go on....
Send a cheque through the purst, ha ha.... Unnly jerkun.
Raoul Moat, a knew um yairz agur. He yowsed to be a boansa in Newcastle. A knew um a lot of yairz since when a was a young kid when a played for Newcastle. He was lake a jettilman. Someone's musta woand him up or done something, rate? All of a sudden a've just listened to the radio, rate? A mean on TV nyowz. Obvisslee he's killed someone, and he's shot two, rate? Which is not naice, really. Obvisslee he musta been on droogz. And he shot two peepil, rate? Now a've heard on the nyowz that obvisslee the droogz a musta worn off. Now he's willing to give in, rate? The Pleece are gonna hold um, rate? He’s a lovelee blurk, a nur that. So, the end the deer, a think he's frightened... erm, he's put his gun doan. A nur for a fact, he's put his gun doan, because a think he’s scared in case the Pleece shoot um and kill um. The droogz have worn off. All he wants to do is surrenda. The end the deer, you shoot someone and kill two othaz, ye might get, what, twelve yairz? Could be about six yairz that he's oat. A nur that he's a good lad.
If he could hear a message from you, Gazza, what would you say to him tonight?
Well, a think that the Pleece got a hurled of um. Listen, a've drurv from Newcastle in a taxi to Rothbury. It’s cost a lot of money. A've brought a dressun goan for um, a big jacket, a've brought some chicken, some bread... a nur you’re gonna laugh at this one: a've brought um a can of lawga... a've brought um a fission rod, cause I heard he was at the rivva, and I’ve got a fission rod too, and fission I’ll have a chat with um, and talk to um, cause a think am the urnly man, I think, I can help um through this. A’ve talked to the Pleece. A sez, “Listen,” a sez, “A nur the guy, he’s a nice guy.” A sez a wanna go through where they had everything cordoned off. I wanna get through there but the Pleece wouldn’t let us. So that was a wairsta tame. Cause they would be frightened in case he’d, lake, shoot me, y’gnaw. But I told um, “He will not shoot me.”
It’s a dangerous situation, though, Gazza, isn’t it?
Lissen. A’ve just been in a car crash, hit a wall at nanety male an owwa. A’ve survaived that. Gnawun may luck he’d probly miss.
So what you’re saying is, you want to go in there, you want to help negotiate?
A’ve got a jacket, a’ve got a dressun goan, a’ve got some chicken, a’ve got some bread, a’ve got a can of lawga, a’ve got a fission rod, a've got my fission rod, and am willun to sit down and dish out, "Moaty! It's Gazza! Whay-aye!” And a guarantee if I shout his name out — “Am heeya!” — we can sit and chat, and me and him can sit and chat, a little bit of fission, and all a’d tell um, ad say, “Moaty, listen....”
So you could sort it out and have a man-to-man chat with him — two pals on the riverbank?
Yeah, two friends on the riverbank from Newcastle… look, listen, A’d be just, ya nur, “Put the gun aware, thruh it in the rivva,” sayun, “Look, Mawty, the worst of the worst, ya might get a twelve-yair stretch. The Pleece are not gonna kill ya.” Cause a nur he’s willun to give in now, cause I think whatever he was on, it’s worn off. A’d say, “The Pleece are not gonna kill ya.” He might do a twelve-yair stretch, obvisslee, for killun someone, which is not very naice, but he did it because obvisslee he was high on drugs probly, rate? For good behaviour he’d get oat after six yairz.
Paul, have you been in touch with him recently?
Naw, because a’ve been in hospital.
When did you last talk to him?
Well, a seen um a suppose a year and a half ago when a was in Newcastle.
When you spoke to him then, how was he?
How was he? Sounza bell. Nowt wrang with um. He’s a boansa, he’s a good lad, he’s a hard guy, he’s a jettilman, but it’s not naice when his girlfriend ran off with anotha guy.
Gazza, thank you very much for talking to us on Real Radio tonight.
Thank you very much, and do us a favour?
Go on....
Send a cheque through the purst, ha ha.... Unnly jerkun.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Just turn round, will you? I want to read your shirt
At some point during this World Cup I want to sit bolt upright and go "Who the fuck is that?" I want to cross my fingers hoping a player will turn round in close-up so I can see how his name - which I'd never heard in my life before until the commentator just garbled it - is written on the back of his shirt.
All I ask is to be pleasantly surprised by a player at the World Cup. Is that really such a tall order?
Only three players have managed to squeeze an "ooh" out of me so far, spurring a frisson of excitement every time they got the ball. One of them was Leo Messi, arguably the only player since Maradona who surprises you if he doesn't get you to go "ooh". The other two - with names that would make a cracking pair of competing soap powders, as it happens - were Özil and Elia, playing for Germany and Holland, respectively.
They both impressed me, yes, but did they surprise me? Not really, no. I'd had a good idea of what to expect for several months during all the pre-tournament build-up. (I hardly devour the sports press, but they were hard to miss: both had been touted - along with four hundred and eighty-seven others - as candidates to fill the slot at Barcelona that Thierry Henry is expected to vacate this summer.)
I note with dismay that, apart from the Spanish players who I watch every week (sorry, Jesús Navas, but you've been a known entity for years), only Cristiano Ronaldo plus a supporting cast of ten and Dunga’s notoriously ooh-lite Brazil remain ready to set their wares out on the table for our delectation. It looks increasingly as though - unless the Dear Leader in Pyongyang has something up his cowpat-brown sleeve - my dream of being surprised by a player at this World Cup will be unrealised.
Thanks, YouTube. Thanks a fat lot.
All I ask is to be pleasantly surprised by a player at the World Cup. Is that really such a tall order?
Only three players have managed to squeeze an "ooh" out of me so far, spurring a frisson of excitement every time they got the ball. One of them was Leo Messi, arguably the only player since Maradona who surprises you if he doesn't get you to go "ooh". The other two - with names that would make a cracking pair of competing soap powders, as it happens - were Özil and Elia, playing for Germany and Holland, respectively.
They both impressed me, yes, but did they surprise me? Not really, no. I'd had a good idea of what to expect for several months during all the pre-tournament build-up. (I hardly devour the sports press, but they were hard to miss: both had been touted - along with four hundred and eighty-seven others - as candidates to fill the slot at Barcelona that Thierry Henry is expected to vacate this summer.)
I note with dismay that, apart from the Spanish players who I watch every week (sorry, Jesús Navas, but you've been a known entity for years), only Cristiano Ronaldo plus a supporting cast of ten and Dunga’s notoriously ooh-lite Brazil remain ready to set their wares out on the table for our delectation. It looks increasingly as though - unless the Dear Leader in Pyongyang has something up his cowpat-brown sleeve - my dream of being surprised by a player at this World Cup will be unrealised.
Thanks, YouTube. Thanks a fat lot.
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Edward G. Robinson's banana kick
Having watched the first three matches of the World Cup, I've got a "little man inside", like Edward G. Robinson's in Double Indemnity, and he's starting to whisper that there's something here that doesn't square.
It's not the schedule-shredding kick-off times – "No, dear, I'm afraid I can't do the weekly shop; aren't you aware that dark horses Greece are up against ever-unpredictable South Korea?" It's not the aural migraine of the "atmosphere-enhancing" vuvuzelas. It's not even the flying FIFA logo that announces, with all the elegance of an Allied Carpets advert, the eighth ultra-slomo replay of a ball trundling disconsolately into touch three minutes into the first half. No, it's none of that.
Deep, deep breath.
It's the football. It's not very good, is it? In the second half of last night's lifeblood-vacuuming France-Uruguay match I placed my hand over my heart and asked myself a question. Is this really any better than watching Coventry City versus Everton (or, more likely in my case, its equivalent: Mallorca versus Racing Santander)? Unless I could say "Yessiree, Bob!" faster than Thierry Henry falls over clutching a random body part, shouldn’t I be doing something more satisfying, if not productive, with my time?
But I stuck with it to the miserable nil-nilly end. Of course I did.
I'm convinced that we have an image of the World Cup that's not unlike our image of our body shape: burned at some point in the increasingly distant past into non-editable ROM in our brains. For me - someone who'd be pushed to describe himself as even a late-summer chicken - that image consists of a bunch of Thornton's-fudge-coloured men wearing bleedy yellow and blue on an even bleedier Subbuteo-green pitch, strolling rings (running was a development that would only come much later) around an abject shower of lumbering Europeans. What exotic planet did these marvellous creatures come from? What was this strange magic that they wove? Did you see that free kick? It actually curved in the air! Did you see that move? Five passes and the ball never left the ground!
Of course Pele is the greatest player of all time. How could he not be? We only ever saw him play for three weeks every four years. We had to imagine all the rest while we were watching Sunderland in the mud.
Now, the world's half-decent players are so familiar to us we're sick of the sight of most of them. We're terminally over-Tevezed and all Drogba’d out. And, let's face it, not even los supercracks – those inhabitants of football's Mount Olympus who are usually referred to by TV pundits as "the likes of yer Messis and Ronaldos" - are, while playing with a group of semi-strangers, likely to come up with anything that we don't see them doing for their European clubs twice a week.
That's what Edward G's little man inside has been saying, anyway. But he's not alone in there. He has to compete with that little lad and his gaudy, bleedy blues, greens and yellows, like a watercolour in the rain. And that's why, hope against hope, I'll be there for Algeria-Slovenia tomorrow, on the off chance it might unveil, to a world enraptured, a 21st-century equivalent of Rivellino's banana kick.
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